Web design software

[Flatlander]

Does anyone know of any good, user friendly web design software for the technologically uneducated? Cheaper is better - at this point I don't need anything too flashy.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[mj_lover]

i personally like dreamweaver MX, but for simple pages you can also use Word (2000 & up i believe)

 

[bignick]

Microsoft FrontPage is another one that a lot of people already have...

 

[shesulsa]

Dan, to get your feet wet (if you haven't already and you don't speak html) to get a free webpage somewhere and play with the host's free webdesign software.

Yahoo has Yahoo Pagebuilder (pages are on geocities.com) so if you sign up for a free webpage there, you can download Pagebuilder which will help with the rudimentary construction.

The site at www.geocities.com/cmaawa is one I built with PageBuilder software. It is simple and static and not dazzling, but we don't do flashy stuff.

I like the user-friendliness of FrontPage, though it is very, very code-heavy. I now use Dreamweaver MX which is not very user-friendly, but very comprehensive and not as code-laden. I constructed my club's first site in Frontpage 2000. Later I reconstructed it in Dreamweaver. The home page in Dreamweaver is MUCH smaller in file size than the Frontpage file and they are identical. I'll let you know when the Dreamweaver site is up and you can check it out.

Your end-target might be where you have a product that will allow you to construct and adjust in a WYSIWYG format and allow for refinements in HTML. Both of the above products do this.

Have fun!

 

[Bob Hubbard]

You can also check out download.com for tools n toys

http://www.download.com/AceHTML/3000-2048_4-10247258.html?tag=pop

Main webdevelop stuff is at http://www.download.com/Web-Page-Creation/2001-10247_4-0.html?tag=dir

 

[AnimEdge]

Notepad would be the cheapest


Dreamweaver 4 though is the greatest! it doesnt have all that stupied "click here and we will do everything for you" stuff on it, anything special must be hard coded! unless its tables, ugh i hate coding tables whitch is why i use DW4! but i guess that isnt to helpfull, my guess if you truely want to do web design go get a book and learn at lest the basics of HTML then go get a wysiwyg software and use it for tables(i hate coding tables) and easy stupied stuff like links text and images

 

[Andrew Green]

Notepad is my favorite

 

[clfsean]

I've been using Microsoft's Interdev & then for the past year, dotNet IDE. They were great for building stuff. Good stuff, but not always friendly or intuitive.

I tried CoffeeCup's stuff & liked it initially but then grew to not care for it.

Since I'm starting retooling the skill set, I'm looking at the Macromedia Suite for possibilities. I've got the MX Education version & kinda like the feel of it.

Easy to do stuff... I'd say MS Word is probably one of the easier ones around.

 

[cashwo]

Notepad is my favorite

WOW!!! I actually didn't think there was that many that used it to develop anymore. Where I work people think I'm strange (ok, maybe they are right ) when I open notepad to code. I do like Homesite quite a bit though.

 

[OUMoose]

As far as price, you can't beat notepad since it's built in to Windows.

Front page express or Netscape Composer would be the places I would start for a graphical web design environment. They're both very easy to use and learn from, as you can drag an object on a page, then look at the code to see how it's formatted and experiment from there. Also, last time I checked, both were free downloads.

Shesulsa brought up a good one in Yahoo's Pagebuilder, which is suprisingly robust for a starter tool. It is also free once you make an account with Yahoo (which is also no big deal.. heh.. I have 4 yahoo accounts).

Allaire's Homesite and GlobalSoft's CuteHTML are also good quality applications, but you're going to be spending money on them ($30 and $50 respectively IIRC).

I would tend to shy away from something like Dreamweaver as a beginner, as it's complex and sort of expensive (>$100). Visual Studio? Ouch. Mega bucks there for alot of features you probably won't need.

Hope this helps! :asian:

 

[Andrew Green]

WOW!!! I actually didn't think there was that many that used it to develop anymore. Where I work people think I'm strange (ok, maybe they are right ) when I open notepad to code. I do like Homesite quite a bit though.

Yep, I'm odd that way... But I like to know what is going on and design software sometimes does silly things with my code.

 

[raedyn]

I prefer a program called notetab, which is notepad plus the ability to have several files open at once.

 

[cashwo]

... I like to know what is going on and design software sometimes does silly things with my code.

EXACTLY!!! I know that there is software out there that could even help me write even HTML faster but I have a set way of code thing from HTML to scripts and I like to code it by hand so I have control of the app that I'm writing.